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Clarke: Shadows not TV crime cliche

Noel Clarke has promised his new show Chasing Shadows is not another cliched detective drama.

The 38-year-old actor and director plays police detective Carl Prior in the new ITV show ,set in the missing person's department and co-starring Reece Shearsmith as autistic detective Sean Stone and Alex Kingston as civilian analyst Ruth Hattersley.

Noel said: "We all wanted to make sure it didn't fall into any of those cliches."

He added that Prior could have the potential to be the familiar cynical detective, who "every week says, 'You're wrong, you're wrong' and then 40 pages later goes, 'Oh, you guys are right.'

"So we really worked on the character and how we'd make him smarter. Even if he knows the person has done it, he goes against Stone and Hattersley and says, 'Look, I need evidence to take this guy down' because he needs to go by the book."

Around 300,000 people go missing in the UK every year. Based on the fact criminologists believe between two and 15 serial killers are currently at large in Britain, it transpires in the show that the disappearances are down to serial killers who prey on the vulnerable.

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Noel said of the popularity of serial killer-based dramas: "People are always fascinated with what they cannot understand. They want to know what's inside the mind of a killer. A film about the good kid who becomes the professor isn't interesting, but killers are."

:: Chasing Shadows is a four-part drama beginning on ITV on September 4.

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